Technical Field
The technical field relates generally to management of computing resources and, more particularly, to systems and methods that manage physical and virtual resources, such as compute, network, and storage resources.
Background Discussion
The information systems industry has developed a variety of tools for monitoring and managing physical and virtual resources. Examples of these tools include hypervisors, storage management tools, and network management tools. Hypervisors virtualize (i.e., introduce a layer of abstraction to and provide standardized interfaces between) the physical hardware of a computer and one or more software components executed by the computer. Storage management tools virtualize physical data storage for use by the software components. Network management tools virtualize physical and logical network recourses (e.g., routers, switches, VLANs, etc.) that provide network bandwidth for use by the software components. When each of these is monitoring and management tools properly installed, configured, and administered, each provides a portion of the computing resources needed for the execution of software components.